She looked at him with terror-stricken eyes that sought to be grateful.
He had picked up his hat from a corner of the littered table, and started to leave, when Garvin, by a sudden movement, planted himself in the doorway. Whether he had been drinking, or whether he were merely crazed by misfortune and the hopeless search in the heat for employment, and by lack of proper nourishment, Hodder could not say. There was a light in his eyes like that in a wounded animal"s; and although he was thin and slight, he had the concentrated power of desperation.
"Say, what church do you come from?" he demanded.
"From St. John"s," said the rector.
"Eldon Parr"s church?"
Hodder started, in spite of himself, at the name.
"Mr. Parr is a member of the congregation."
"Come off! He owns it and runs it, the same as he does everything else in this town. Maybe you don"t think I read the Sunday papers. Say, I was respectable once, and had a good place. You wouldn"t believe it, would you?"
Hodder hesitated. There was obviously no way to pa.s.s the man except by using physical force.
"If you have anything to say to me, Mr. Garvin, I shall be glad to talk to you later. You must not stop me now," he said with a touch of severity.
"You"ll listen to me, right here and now," cried Garvin. "If you think I am going to let Eldon Parr"s minister, or any one else belonging to him, save that boy"s life, you"ve got another guess comin". That"s all. I"d rather have him die--d"ye hear? I"d rather have him die."
The woman behind them whimpered.... The name was ringing like a knell in Hodder"s head--Eldon Parr! Coming, as it had, like a curse from the lips of this wretched, half-demented creature, it filled his soul with dismay. And the accusation had in it the profound ring of truth. He was Eldon Parr"s minister, and it was Eldon Parr who stood between him and his opportunity.
"Why do you speak of Mr. Parr?" he asked, though the question cost him a supreme effort.
"Why do I speak of him? My G.o.d, because he ruined me. If it hadn"t been for him, d.a.m.n him, I"d have a home, and health and happiness to-day, and the boy would be well and strong instead of lying there with the life all but gone out of him. Eldon Parr did for me, and now he"s murdered my son--that"s why I mention him."
In the sudden intensity of his feeling, Hodder seized Garvin by the arms--arms that were little more than skin and bone. The man might be crazed, he might be drunk: that he believed what he was saying there could be no question. He began to struggle violently, but the rector was strong.
"Be still," he commanded. And suddenly, overcome less by the physical power than by the aspect of the clergyman, an expression of bewilderment came into his eyes, and he was quiet. Hodder dropped his arms. "I do not intend to go until I hear what you have to say. It would be useless, at any rate, since your child"s life is at stake. Tell me how Mr. Parr has ruined you."
Garvin stared at him, half in suspicion, half in amazement.
"I guess you never knew of his ruining anybody, did you?" he demanded sullenly. "Well, I"ll tell you all right, and you can go and tell him.
He won"t care much--he"s used to it by this time, and he gets square with G.o.d by his churches and charities. Did you ever hear of a stock called Consolidated Tractions?"
Consolidated Tractions! In contrast to the sordid misery and degradation of this last refuge of the desperate Hodder saw the lofty, panelled smoking room at Francis Ferguson"s, and was listening again to Wallis Plimpton"s cynical amus.e.m.e.nt as to how he and Everett Constable and Eldon Parr himself had "gat out" before the crash; "got out" with all the money of the wretch who now stood before him! His parishioners! his Christians! Oh G.o.d!
The man was speaking in his shrill voice.
"Well, I was a Traction sucker, all right, and I guess you wouldn"t have to walk more than two blocks to find another in this neighbourhood. You think Eldon Parr"s a big, n.o.ble man, don"t you? You"re proud to run his church, ain"t you? You wouldn"t believe there was a time when I thought he was a big man, when I was kind of proud to live in the same city with him. She"ll tell you how I used to come home from the store and talk about him after supper, and hope that the kid there would grow up into a financier like Eldon Parr. The boys at the store talked about him: he sort of laid hold on our imaginations with the library he gave, and Elmwood Park, and the picture of the big organ in your church in the newspapers--and sometimes, Mary and me and the boy, in the baby carriage, on Sunday afternoons we used to walk around by his house, just to look at it. You couldn"t have got me to believe that Eldon Parr would put his name to anything that wasn"t straight.
"Then Consolidated Tractions came along, with Parr"s, name behind it.
Everybody was talking about it, and how it was payin" eight per cent.
from the start, and extra dividends and all, and what a marvel of finance it was. Before the kid came, as soon as I married her, we began to save up for him. We didn"t go to the theatres or nothing. Well, I put it all, five thousand dollars, into Consolidated. She"ll tell you how we sat up half the night after we got the first dividend talking about how we"d send the kid to college, and after we went to bed we couldn"t sleep. It wasn"t more than a year after that we began to hear things--and we couldn"t sleep for sure, and the dividends stopped and the stock tumbled. Even then I wouldn"t believe it of him, that he"d take poor people"s money that way when he had more than he knew what to do with. I made up my mind if I went down to see him and told him about it, he"d make it right. I asked the boss for an hour off, and headed for the Parr building--I"ve been there as much as fifty times since--but he don"t bother with small fry. The clerks laugh when they see me comin"...
I got sick worryin", and when I was strong enough to be around they"d filled my job at the grocery, and it wasn"t long before we had to move out of our little home in Alder Street. We"ve been movin" ever since,"
he cried, and tears of weakness were in his eyes, "until we"ve come to this, and we"ll have to get out of here in another week. G.o.d knows where we"ll go then."
Hodder shuddered.
"Then I found out how he done it--from a lawyer. The lawyer laughed at me, too. Say, do you wonder I ain"t got much use for your church people?
Parr got a corporation lawyer named Langmaid--he"s another one of your millionnaire crooks--to fix it up and get around the law and keep him out of jail. And then they had to settle with Tim Beatty for something like three hundred thousand. You know who Beatty is--he owns this city--his saloon"s around here on Elm Street. All the crooks had to be squared. Say," he demanded aggressively, "are Parr and Langmaid any better than Beatty, or any of the hold-up men Beatty covers? There"s a street-walker over there in those flats that"s got a million times more chance to get to heaven--if there is any--than those financiers, as they call "emselves--I ain"t much on high finance, but I"ve got some respect for a second story man now--he takes some risks! I"ll tell you what they did, they bought up the short car lines that didn"t pay and sold "em to themselves for fifty times as much as they were worth; and they got controlling interests in the big lines and leased "em to themselves with dividends guaranteed as high as eighteen per cent. They capitalized the Consolidated for more millions than a little man like me can think of, and we handed "em our money because we thought they were honest. We thought the men who listed the stock on the Exchange were honest. And when the crash came, they"d got away with the swag, like any common housebreakers. There were dummy directors, and a dummy president. Eldon Parr didn"t have a share--sold out everything when she went over two hundred, but you bet he kept his stock in the leased lines, which guarantee more than they earn. He cleaned up five million, they say....
My money--the money that might give that boy fresh air, and good doctors ....Say, you believe in h.e.l.l, don"t you? You tell Eldon Parr to keep his charity,--he can"t send any of it in here. And you"d better go back to that church of his and pray to keep his soul out of h.e.l.l."...
His voice, which had risen even to a higher pitch, fell silent. And all at once, without warning, Garvin sank, or rather tumbled upon the bed, sobbing in a way that was terrible to see. The wife stole across the room, sat down beside him, and laid her hand on his shoulder....
In spite of the intensity of his own anguish, Hodder was conscious of a curious detachment; and for months afterward particular smells, the sight of a gasoline stove, a certain popular tune gave him a sharp twinge of pain. The acid distilling in his soul etched the scene, the sounds, the odours forever in his memory: a stale hot wind from the alley rattled the shutter-slats, and blew the door to; the child stirred; and above the strident, irregular weeping rose main, in ironical contrast, the piano and the voice across the yard. In that glimpse he had into the heart of life"s terrible mystery he momentarily understood many things: he knew that behind the abandon of the woman"s song was the same terror which reigned in the room in which he stood....
There were voices in the pa.s.sageway without, a woman saying in a German accent,--"It is here, sir."
There was a knock at the door....
CHAPTER XI. THE LOST PARISHIONER
I
Hodder opened the door. In the dingy pa.s.sageway he perceived a tall figure which immediately turned out to be that of an old gentleman.
In spite of the heat, he wore a long coat and an old-fashioned, high collar, a black tie, under which was exposed a triangle of immaculate, pleated linen. In one hand he held a gold-headed stick, a large tall hat of which the silk nap was a little rubbed, a string sustaining a parcel, the brown paper wrapping of which was soaked: in the other, a manila bag containing lemons.
His head was bent forward a little, the high dome of it was bald, but the white hair cl.u.s.tered thickly behind the temples. The face was clean-shaven, the cheeks touched with red, the nose high and dominating, distinctly philanthropic. And the blue eyes rested on the clergyman with a benevolence unfeigned.
"Good afternoon, sir," the old gentleman said; "I am told Mrs. Garvin lives here."
Before the rector could reply Mrs. Garvin herself stood between them.
"It"s Mr. Bentley!" she exclaimed.
"I fear I"m intruding, ma"am," he said. "But some of d.i.c.ky"s little friends have just informed me that he is ill, and I have taken the liberty of calling to inquire."
Mr. Bentley entered the room,--simple words to express that which was in some sort an event. He laid his parcels on the table, his hat and stick on a chair, and stood looking down in silence at the thin little form on the couch. Presently he turned.
"I"m afraid he"s very ill, ma"am," he said gently. "You have your own doctor, no doubt. But if you will permit me, as a friend, to make a suggestion, we have in the city one of the best child specialists in the United States, who is never weary of curing these little ones,--Dr.
Jarvis, and I shall be happy to ask him to come and see d.i.c.ky."
Mrs. Garvin glanced at Hodder, who came forward.
"I was just about to telephone for Dr. Jarvis, Mr. Bentley, when you arrived. I am Mr. Hodder, of St. John"s."
"How do you do, sir?" The kindly eyes, alight with a gentle flame, rested upon the rugged figure of the rector. "I am glad that you, too, agree that Dr. Jarvis is advisable, Mr. Hodder."
There was a sound from the bed. Garvin had got to his feet and was staring wildly, with reddened lids.
"Are you Horace Bentley?" he demanded.
"That is my name, sir," Mr. Bentley replied. His expression of surprise was only momentary. And in all his life Hodder had never beheld a greater contrast in human beings than between that gracious and courtly old man and the haggard, unkempt, unshaved, and starving outcast facing him. Something like a film came over Garvin"s eyes.